Rabbi Crowns Eddie Long King: Intercontinental Champ

By Ta-Nehisi Coates

The right reverend invites a rabbi of questionable merit to his church, and has himself proclaimed a King:

A rabbi and Christian scholar questioned Long and Messer, the man who led Long's crowning ceremony.
Messer said during the ceremony that the Torah was a "priceless" 312-year-old scroll that had been recovered from the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II. He said he wanted to honor Long "on behalf of Jewish people, and the land of Israel."
Rabbi Hillel Norry of Congregation Shearith Israel in Georgia said the ceremony was "ridiculous."

There's no Jewish coronation ceremony where someone is wrapped in a Torah and made a king, he said.
"We just don't do that. We treat it with deference," Norry said of the Torah. "It's a shawl, not a crown. Don't treat it that way."

Norry said Messer doesn't appear to be an ordained rabbi in the Jewish faith. He also doubts that the Torah that Long was wrapped in is actually 312 years old, and had somehow escaped detection in a concentration camp.

"The Torah is the size of a person. It's not like you can hide one," he said.

This video basically was made to offend every conceivable stratum of this country--blacks, Jews, Christians, atheists--basically everyone. It actually ends with Long lifted aloft on his "throne" by four ushers, while clutching, what appears to be, a championship belt.

As Professor Blair Kelley said last night on Twitter -- I knew it was wrong from the moment he said "foreskin."